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Thursday, September 11, 2014

I enjoyed...

...my time in the West Country, but there is something sad about modern British towns on a warm late-summer evening. Teenage children stand about shouting obscenities in the dreary corners of a shopping centre in Taunton, unhappy, and with bored, sullen faces. Even those twirling their bicycles were not having any fun, but just aimlessly going round in bleak circles, muttering 4-letter words amid the litter. I enjoyed a wander by the riverside park, which was empty - why do the children prefer ugliness?

Taunton has always had a solid, family sort of feel to it in a square-windowed, vaguely Georgian, way, with good shops and a sense of bustle because of the railway and the canal and connections across the West country. There are some fine churches, and an extraordinary history...Civil war...Monmouth...

The riverside walk putters out into a car park/bridge/main road/supermarket-ish sort of area and I turned back towards the Castle and the Apple and Parrot...and thence back to the hotel and my computer and some work...